RALPH OSTLER.
(Skelt.)
The shocking old alternative to being slowly hanged when the cart was withdrawn was the method by which criminals with sufficient courage were enabled to anticipate the modern drop, by throwing themselves off the ladder, and so securing an instant and practically painless death. But this was making the condemned their own executioners, and, to all intents and purposes, suicides. It also required a considerable amount of resolution.
Turpin's body lay in state for a day and a night at the "Blue Boar" inn, Castlegate, York, and was buried the following morning in the churchyard of St. George's, Fishergate Postern. That evening it was disinterred by some of the city surgeons, for dissection, but the mob, with whom Turpin had already become a hero, determined that his remains should not be dishonoured, rescued the body and reinterred it in lime, so as to effectually prevent any other attempts.
The Ride to York and Black Bess are alike myths, but the spot was long pointed out upon the racecourse at York (perhaps it still is), where that gallant mare sank down exhausted and died. So strong a hold have myths upon the imagination, that it is hardly possible the most painstaking historian will succeed in popularly discrediting the bona fides of that ride, invented and so stirringly described by Harrison Ainsworth in 1834, in his Rookwood.
TURPIN'S WAIST-GIRDLE, WRIST-SHACKLES, AND LEG IRONS.
Ainsworth was the unconscious predisposing cause of much of Skelt's Juvenile Drama, that singular collection of remarkably mild plays for toy theatres, allied with terrific scenes and the most picturesque figures conceived, drawn and engraved in the wildest spirit of melodrama, and in the most extravagant attitudes. No such scenery ever existed as that drawn by Skelt's anonymous artists. It was a decided improvement upon Nature; and no heroes so heroic and no villains so villainous could possibly have lived and moved as those imagined by his staff of draughtsmen. Dick Turpin was of course in the forefront of the thirty-three plays published by Skelt, and the pictured characters do full justice—and perhaps a trifle over—to the entirely illegitimate fame Turpin has acquired. You see them reproduced here, engraved line for line from Skelt, scattered over the pages of this reconsideration of Turpin. Firstly, you have the great brethren, Turpin and Tom King, themselves, mounted on noble steeds that stretch themselves gallantly in their stride; and then you have Sir Ralph Rookwood and that intelligent officer, Simon Sharpscent, also on horseback, hurrying off in company, but upon the trail of the highwaymen. Simon Sharpscent, you will observe, has in his hand a something that looks not unlike a Field Marshal's bâton. It is the police-officer's crown-tipped staff of office; and producing it he will presently say, dramatically: "I arrest you in the King's name!"
Always, with the remarkable exception of the group of "Highwaymen Carousing," these characters are intensely dramatic in their attitudes; but the carousing highwaymen are unexpectedly wooden; although they look capable of being daredevil fellows when the generous wine, or the old ale—whichever it may be—has done its work. Even the "Maid of the Inn" is a creature of romance.